The first fifty years of United States history was a period of seemingly endless possibility. With the birth of a new country during the age of revolutions came new religions, new literary genres, new political parties, temperance and abolitionist societies, and the expansion of print and marketing networks that would dramatically change the course of the century. Envisioning Scripture: Joseph Smith's Revelations in Their Early American Contexts brings together ten essays from leading scholars on the history of early American religion and print culture. Covering issues of gender, race, prophecy, education, scripture, real and narrative time, authority and power, and apocalypticism, the essays invite the reader--scholar, student, etc.--to expand their knowledge of early Mormon history by grasping more fully the American contexts that Mormonism grew out of. Contributors include Catherine A. Brekus, William Davis, Elizabeth Fenton, Kathleen Flake, Paul Gutjahr, Jared Hickman, Susan Juster, Seth Perry, Laura Thiemann Scales, and Roberto A. Valdeón.

Joseph Smith, the founding prophet of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and of the broader Latter-day Saint movement, produced several volumes of scripture between 1829, when he translated the Book of Mormon, and 1844, when he was murdered. The Book of Mormon, published in 1830, is well known. Less read and studied are the subsequent texts that Smith translated after the Book of Mormon, texts that he presented as the writings of ancient Old World and New World prophets. These works were published and received by early Latter-day Saints as prophetic scripture that included important revelations and commandments from God. This collaborative volume is the first to study Joseph Smith's translation projects in their entirety. In this carefully curated collection, experts contribute cutting-edge research and incisive analysis. The chapters explore Smith's translation projects in focused detail and in broad contexts, as well as in comparison and conversation with one another. Authors approach Smith's sacred texts historically, textually, linguistically, and literarily to offer a multidisciplinary view. Scrupulous examination of the production and content of Smith's translations opens new avenues for understanding the foundations of Mormonism, provides insight on aspects of early American religious culture, and helps conceptualize the production and transmission of sacred texts.

In the last several years a wealth of information has been published on Joseph Smith's practice of polygamy. For some who were already well aware of this aspect of early Mormon history, the availability of new research and discovered documents has been a wellspring of further insight and knowledge into this topic. For others who are learning of Joseph's marriages to other women for the first time, these books and online publications can be both an information overload and a challenge to one's faith. In this short volume, Brian C. Hales (author of the 3-volume Joseph Smith's Polygamy: History and Theology) and Laura H. Hales wade through the murky waters of history to help bring some clarity to this episode of Mormonism's past. As Joseph Smith's participation in plural marriage involved more than just the Prophet and his first wife Emma, this volume also includes short biographical sketches of the 35 other women who were sealed to Joseph but whose stories of faith, struggle, and courage have been largely forgotten and ignored over time. While we may never fully understand the details and reasons surrounding this practice, Brian and Laura Hales provide readers with an accessible, forthright, and faithful look into this challenging topic so that we can at least come toward a better understanding. Praise for Joseph Smith's Polygamy: Toward a Better Understanding "Few matters of LDS history have proven to be as faith-sensitive as Joseph Smith's plural marriages. While a number of efforts have been made in recent years to shed light on this challenging phenomenon, nothing has brought greater clarity, enlightenment, and, particularly for believing Saints, spiritual reassurance, than has the work of researcher Brian Hales. He and his wife Laura have now rendered a monumental service to Mormons and interested observers by bringing clarity and better understanding to this topic. I for one am grateful for the context, perspective, and both straightforward and faithful answers provided for so many of the questions surrounding Nauvoo polygamy. It is a book that will be read and discussed for years to come." - Robert L. Millet, Professor Emeritus of Religious Education, Brigham Young University

Explore the Book is not a commentary with verse-by-verse annotations. Neither is it just a series of analyses and outlines. Rather, it is a complete Bible survey course. No one can finish this series of studies and remain unchanged. The reader will receive lifelong benefit and be enriched by these practical and understandable studies. Exposition, commentary, and practical application of the meaning and message of the Bible will be found throughout this giant volume. Bible students without any background in Bible study will find this book of immense help as will those who have spent much time studying the Scriptures, including pastors and teachers. Explore the Book is the result and culmination of a lifetime of dedicated Bible study and exposition on the part of Dr. Baxter. It shows throughout a deep awareness and appreciation of the grand themes of the gospel, as found from the opening book of the Bible through Revelation.

Best Book Award • Mormon History Association A brilliant young historian excavates the brief life of a lost Mormon city, uncovering a “grand, underappreciated saga in American history” (Wall Street Journal). In Kingdom of Nauvoo, Benjamin E. Park draws on newly available sources to re-create the founding and destruction of the Mormon city of Nauvoo. On the banks of the Mississippi in Illinois, the early Mormons built a religious utopia, establishing their own army and writing their own constitution. For those offenses and others—including the introduction of polygamy, which was bitterly opposed by Emma Smith, the iron-willed first wife of Joseph Smith—the surrounding population violently ejected the Mormons, sending them on their flight to Utah. Throughout his absorbing chronicle, Park shows how the Mormons of Nauvoo were representative of their era, and in doing so elevates Mormon history into the American mainstream.

Mormonism's founder, Joseph Smith, claimed to have translated ancient scriptures. He dictated an American Bible from metal plates reportedly buried by ancient Jews in a nearby hill, and produced an Egyptian "Book of Abraham" derived from funerary papyri he extracted from a collection of mummies he bought from a traveling showman. In addition, he rewrote sections of the King James Version as a "New Translation" of the Bible. Smith and his followers used the term translation to describe the genesis of these English scriptures, which remain canonical for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Whether one believes him or not, the discussion has focused on whether Smith's English texts represent literal translations of extant source documents. On closer inspection, though, Smith's translations are far more metaphysical than linguistic. In Joseph Smith's Translation, Samuel Morris Brown argues that these translations express the mystical power of language and scripture to interconnect people across barriers of space and time, especially in the developing Mormon temple liturgy. He shows that Smith was devoted to an ancient metaphysics--especially the principle of correspondence, the concept of "as above, so below"--that provided an infrastructure for bridging the human and the divine as well as for his textual interpretive projects. Joseph Smith's projects of metaphysical translation place Mormonism at the productive edge of the transitions associated with shifts toward "secular modernity." This transition into modern worldviews intensified, complexly, in nineteenth-century America. The evolving legacies of Reformation and Enlightenment were the sea in which early Mormons swam, says Brown. Smith's translations and the theology that supported them illuminate the power and vulnerability of the Mormon critique of American culture in transition. This complex critique continues to resonate and illuminate to the present day.

According to a longstanding interpretation, book religions are agents of textuality and logocentrism. This volume inverts the traditional perspective: its focus is on the strong dependency between scripture and aesthetics, holy books and material artworks, sacred texts and ritual performances. The contributions, written by a group of international specialists in Western, Byzantine, Islamic and Jewish Art, are committed to a comparative and transcultural approach. The authors reflect upon the different strategies of »clothing« sacred texts with precious materials and elaborate forms. They show how the pretypographic cultures of the Middle Ages used book ornaments as media for building a close relation between the divine words and their human audience. By exploring how art shapes the religious practice of books, and how the religious use of books shapes the evolution of artistic practices this book contributes to a new understanding of the deep nexus between sacred scripture and art.

Combining theology, politics and historical analysis, “theorizes what might be at stake—ethically—for America’s current political life” (Andrew Taylor, Journal of American History). Conventional wisdom holds that attempts to combine religion and politics will produce unlimited violence. Concepts such as jihad, crusade, and sacrifice need to be rooted out, the story goes, for the sake of more bounded and secular understandings of violence. Ted Smith upends this dominant view, drawing on Walter Benjamin, Giorgio Agamben, and others to trace the ways that seemingly secular politics produce their own forms of violence without limit. He brings this argument to life—and digs deep into the American political imagination—through a string of surprising reflections on John Brown, the nineteenth-century abolitionist who took up arms against the state in the name of a higher law. Smith argues that the key to limiting violence is not its separation from religion, but its connection to richer and more critical modes of religious reflection. Weird John Brown develops a negative political theology that challenges both the ways we remember American history and the ways we think about the nature, meaning, and exercise of violence. “Powerfully combines theology and political theory. . . . Recommended.” —R. J. Meagher, Choice “Smith illustrates how an ethical and philosophical reading of history can help us to better understand the world we live in.” —Franklin Rausch, New Books in Christian Studies “A brilliantly original and compelling book.” —John Stauffer, Harvard University “A very sophisticated philosophical and theological reflection on John Brown and the question of divine violence.” —Willie James Jennings, Duke University